If you don't hear the loops distorting, then they're not clipping. They might be making the meters turn red, but all red means is "0db." Besides, CEP's meters are about -.03db "hotter" than most other apps. It's kind of a safety measure to keep people from from clipping, although I'd prefer the meters to be accurate.
Yeah, I run across this all the time. There are 2 ways to deal with it. First, just turn down the master fader a notch. Every session I start, the first thing I do is set the master fader to -3 db. (no decimal point there). Just turn up the volume on whatever you're monitoring with. I then leave the drums at 0db on the track, b/c it helps me (personally) get relative levels on other stuff. For example, I know from the way that I compress my bass that it usually is going to sit in well with the drums somewhere between -8db and -11db if the drums are at zero. This is just my own personal method for getting close in the early stages of a mix.
The second way is to just compress/hard limit the loops like Chrisjob suggested. Personally, I don't like screwing with the dynamics of loops, particularly if I like the way the loop sounds to begin with. But you're probably only talking about hacking off around .02db of a transient, so it's no big deal if you just hard limit it. Just seems easier to me to turn the master fader down.
